“There is no one true language – and no one true religion” -- Rabbi Rami Shapiro

Aaron Shapiro, left, and his father and co-author, Rabbi Rami Shapiro, at right, talk with members of the Huntsville Literary Association before providing the keynote address for the annual banquet on Thursday, May 23, 2013, at Huntsville Country Club on Oakwood Avenue in Huntsville. (Kay Campbell / KCampbell@al.com)

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – Rabbi Rami Shapiro, a nationally respected leader of interfaith spiritual development seminars, poet and author of more than a dozen books, says that writing can be a spiritual practice that’s outside of any formal religion.

“A spiritual practice is something that eventually strips away all of our labels,” Shapiro said Thursday night, May 23, 2013, as he opened the keynote address he delivered with his son and co-author, Aaron Shapiro, for the annual banquet for members of the Huntsville Literary Association.

The banquet, held at the Huntsville Country Club on Oakwood Avenue, celebrates the programs and publications of the 46-year-old network of local poets, novelists, dramatists, essayists and anyone who love literature.

“For me, I use writing in the same way some use chanting or silent meditation – as a place of un-labeled-ness,” Shapiro said.

Writing can help the writer break through to a place beyond labels, beyond the individual, to a connection to something universal.

“Is there a self?” Shapiro asked, rhetorically. “Aaron would say ‘no,’ but I say: Yes, there is, but just not yourself. Eventually you can become aware of one Big-'S' Self in the universe – and that’s what God is, and you can get God’s perspective, not your own ego-istic perspective.”

Shapiro and his son both gave rapid-fire discourses of a mixture of metaphysical speculations, practical writing challenges and quick-witted quips.

Their joint presentation sent ideas about the act of writing and its impact on the writer spinning through the room of about 80 people.

Their slightly different perspectives lent the energy of debate to their talk.

“I believe my father believes that poetry can transcribe the primal warblings of a universal Truth,” said Aaron Shapiro, a lecturer in English literature at Middle Tennessee State University, where Rabbi Shapiro also lectures and directs the college’s creative writing program.

Aaron Shapiro is not sure, he said, he believes there is a universal “Truth.”

“I say that writing is profoundly human activity, that language is a profoundly human tool – but that language, like a mirror, always and inevitably distorts,” Aaron Shapiro said. “Writing is a conduit to the human, not the divine – and that’s enough for me: That we can find in the muck and muddle of life a kind of beauty.”

In something like a paradoxical Zen discipline, but much more gentle, the book walks writers through the deconstruction, reconstruction and augmentation of language. Playing with words can be useful for a writer, they say, because it helps the writer hear words and meanings in new relationships. But wordplay also has spiritual implications.

“The important thing is this: Language is infinitely malleable,” the Shapiros write in a chapter on “Writing to Open the Mind.” “We can, if we want, make meaning from nonsense.”

And playing with language, like learning a new language, Rabbi Shapiro said, can help people to come to a different understanding both of their own language and of the infinite ways of understanding the experience of human reality – or, as Aaron Shapiro would have it, realities.

“There is no one true language – and no one true religion,” said Rabbi Shapiro, who, before his rabbinic ordination, studied Zen Buddhism for 10 years. “These exercises (in the book) are one way to get beyond language so that it retains its freshness and so surprises us. Learning a new language can help us understand the world in nuanced ways. Learning about other religions can help us recognize the nuances in our own religion.”

Rabbi Shapiro, former director of the inter-religious workshop and retreat center Scarritt Center, is an award-winning author, poet, essayist and editor. His books include works of translation and interpretation of Ecclesiastes , Hebrew prophets and Hasidic wisdom. He holds a doctorate in religion from Union Graduate School and teaches religious studies at Middle Tennessee State University where he also directs MTSU’s creative writing program.

Aaron Shapiro teaches English at MTSU. "Writing as a Sacred Art" is his first book. The book grew partly out of his own realization that writing was something more than the creation of artwork for sale or admiration; writing was one of the ways he was compelled to confront and process experience.

"I realized I was going to have to write whether or not I was any good at it," he told Publisher's Weekly in their article about the new book.